Acting Up­­­­­­

I didn’t know whether to be happy or not. Samuel’s theatrical debut was such a resounding personal success that on the one hand I was immensely proud but on the other, secretly, I’d been hoping that he wouldn’t enjoy it as much as he did and that the acting bug would become a passing fancy like so many others and talk of drama school would be quietly dropped.
There’s no chance of that happening now.
Samuel has been attending the local théâtre group since last September, something which has been noted sarcastically by his teachers who have him marked down now as something of a drama queen, and this performance was the culmination of months of rehearsals, tantrum throwing, ego clashing and some quite astonishing flouncing about. The build up to the two shows had been fraught as Samuel, holding down two major roles, struggled firstly with learning his lines and then started getting nervous in the few days before.
“How do you cope with nerves before you go on stage, Daddy?” He asked one night at the dinner table.
Natalie gave me a stern look along the lines of ‘make something up for God’s sakes, don’t tell the truth’ and I gave it some thought. I could be honest and list the early days of chain smoking, alcohol addiction and little pills or the latter method of outwardly not giving a toss while inside my stomach ulcer does a roaring trade in acid production. I gave him some management speak about ‘visualisation’ and preparation which is at least partly true but which also I don’t think was much help to him as the nerves continued to bite.
We had seats reserved right at the front, which if I were him I would have hated – I don’t like having anybody I even know in the audience let alone on the front row. A couple of years ago a group of friends from school came to see me perform in Birmingham and I was a gibbering wreck backstage.
“What’s up with you?” A colleague asked, “what difference does it make?”
“There’s a woman out there who I lost my virginity to...” I said, practically hyperventilating. “I’m not sure she could handle another bad performance.”
The other problem with me being on the front row was that I was seated right next to the standing video camera operator who, to put it mildly, had something of a flatulence problem and which I hoped wouldn’t prove to be a metaphor for the show that was to follow.
The lights went down, the ‘sshhing’ started and faded away and then the play began.
I’m not sure I understood everything that went on. The play was written by the leader of the théâtregroup and was an intergalactic Romeo and Juliet parody taking in such diverse additions as Rihanna, Snow White, local Berrichon peasantry and Charlie Chaplin. It rambled on a bit in truth and wasn’t helped by the fact that some of the cast were far too young and simply hadn’t, or at least not yet been capable of, learning their lines meaning that there were uncomfortable silences, some almost Pinteresquein length.
The democracy of the exercise was admirable, every child, aging from about five years old up to fifteen or sixteen, had some role to play in the performance but it also meant that the limited theatre space which had been created in the local salle des fêteshad a ‘non-performing cast’ issue with those currently not needed sitting in the ‘well’ in front of the stage. The irony here being that those who couldn’t remember what to say on stage a few minutes earlier were now busy chatting away to their friends and disturbing others. The prompter, who by now was becoming a leading figure in the performance, was trying to shush these unemployed cast members which confused some of the more nervy actors on stage who thought, confusingly, that they were being asked to pipe down.
But the older members of the cast and in particular those who had learnt their lines were stunning. The knowledge that they knew what they were saying and when they had to say it, meant they had had time to actually learn to do some acting as well and Samuel, and yes I know ‘I would say that wouldn’t I?’ was very good indeed. The truth is I wouldn’t just say that anyway. If he’d stunk the place out like my video operating neighbour I simply wouldn’t have written about the event at all, but Samuel, as Charlie Chaplin/The Mad Hatter, had wonderful comic timing and there were whispers of approval all around us whenever he was on stage making me ridiculously proud and the opening night  a triumph.
Matineés are tricky at the best of times but I’d really hoped that after a good night’s sleep and the butterflies of the premier had subsided, that things would have tightened up a bit. I think I was expecting a bit too much and those that hadn’t known their lines the night before still didn’t know them the next day but the audience didn’t help. There’s a reason why I am onstage as a comedian and not in the audience and that is that I can legitimately and, ahem, forcefully tell people to shut up and bloody well behave themselves. The Sunday afternoon crowd, while still appreciative, were restless and at times downright rude which meant that I couldn’t relax. I’ve only been to the cinema three times in 20 years and that is because of my rank intolerance of other people’s discourtesy and I was glad that, at the interval, I had to dash off and pick Maurice up from some dance spectacular that he’d insisted on seeing as it meant I didn’t have to hang around the salle des fêtes and upbraid people about their manners.
I had fifteen minutes to pick Maurice up in a different town and bring him back before Samuel opened the second half doing his comic turn. I dashed into the dance spectacular looking for Mo only to go crashing clumsily into a Line Dancing finale, all a-whooping and a-hollerin’ and not at all keen on a one man mod invasion. I apologised, grabbed Mo and left hastily like they’d run me out of town and made it back just as the lights dimmed and the elderly video man let rip with another cloud of poison gas.
Once again Samuel was excellent and, I’m not ashamed to admit it, brought tears to my eyes as I realised that I’m probably never going to have that ‘get a trade, son’ conversation with him now. He has genuine talent and as such a lifetime of showbiz disappointment, frustration, crushing lows and short-lived highs await him and all I can probably do is be there to catch him when I’m needed.
I’ll enrol him on a plumbing course though, just in case....
More FIVE STAR reviews than you can shake a stick at, the book A la Mod... about how it all started is available by clicking this LINK